


I Want to Love You But I Don't Know How

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Love, but then i just get so happy with these kids, i am trash, so fluffy ending, so have some trash with me, sorry for the feels, this started angsty, what else is necessary really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 17:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6668530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a milestone in his relationship with Jemma, Fitz reflects on the ways they love each other. </p><p>"Before the virus, even without a PhD in Biology or its related fields, Fitz would have scoffed at the notion of a broken heart. He didn’t need Jemma’s expertise in human anatomy to know that hearts don’t break, at least not the way people mean when they say so."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want to Love You But I Don't Know How

**Author's Note:**

> Title and relevant line and inspiration from "Neptune" by Sleeping at Last. If nobody's let you in on that FS secret yet, Sleeping at Last's songs ARE Fitzsimmons. Seriously. And people have made hella good fanvids with his music -- go check it out.

Before the virus, even without a PhD in Biology or its related fields, Fitz would have scoffed at the notion of a broken heart. He didn’t need Jemma’s expertise in human anatomy to know that hearts don’t break, at least not the way people mean when they say so. 

That, of course, had been when he still had his best friend -- when he took her and their friendship for granted but also lived constantly in fear of losing her. Not losing her the way he ended up almost doing, with her falling out of the back of a plane while he scrabbled helplessly to -- do what, exactly? Fall with her? -- but rather losing her from some fault of his own, knowing that eventually he would be too awkward or arrogant or pushy or weird for Jemma Simmons and she would lose interest. It was a life of contradiction, having her as such a constant that no alternative was imaginable and simultaneously dreading an ending. 

But then it almost happened- he almost lost her, they all almost lost her, and he had to reconsider the order of his life. What was once just the way they were was thrown into a new, confusing, stunning light. At first, at the same time that he found himself maddeningly smitten with her, he felt disgusted by himself. Wasn’t the love they already had, the love between two friends and scientific partners, enough? He knew enough about “nice guys” to worry about making her uncomfortable and to feel sleazy just thinking about her in any way even remotely romantic. 

In time, he learned that his new love did not negate the old. Yes, his body responded to her, quite powerfully at times, but it always had, though before he assumed it was because she was a woman, not because she was Jemma. But beneath all that -- no, next to it, really -- there was still that deep trust, commitment, and friendship. That had not changed. 

He understood around that same time what a broken heart meant, though his heart -- for now -- was merely fractured. It was the most painful thing he ever experienced, living with his love for her. He would maintain that belief even after almost dying (several times), even after brain damage, even after close friends betrayed him again and again and _again_. His lungs felt raw from holding his love in. He needed to tell her, but as long as he didn’t, he could avoid having his heart fully broken. 

Before he came back from Hydra, he thought that he had hardened, and that his love was gone. 

He was wrong. 

If anything, his feelings had been hibernating. It was a new form of torture, living, being near her, because now she knew, and his love no longer existed only within him. 

But before long his love had become something else, something indestructible and all-consuming but no longer painful. It melted and moulded and shifted to fill every crack of his soul. He could go on with his life because loving her was like breathing. He would love her this way even if they were to be separated for years. He would love her this way if he had to stand beside her as the best man at her wedding to someone else. (He still thinks this is true, though when he mentions this at their wedding rehearsal dinner he is almost laughed out of the room. Even she tells him that that would be mad, though she’s crying as she does so.) This knowledge did not make him feel weak. At long last, it made him feel strong, feel right, feel good. 

He didn’t need anything from her, which made it all the more amazing when she gave it, gave everything, when it became clear she felt something just as powerful for him. 

And now his love lives on his face, from which he’s had to banish it for so long. Now suddenly they are in this same place. They are speaking the same language. Their personal expressions are still there, only fitting together more comfortably. And the kissing -- the kissing Fitz enjoys a lot. And the other stuff. 

“Hey,” she whispers now, beside him. “Come back to me.” 

Her eyes shine with moonlight as he turns to look at her. They are sitting, feet in the water, at the end of a dock of the pond near the inn where they’d been married just that afternoon. He has rolled up his nice trousers, and her dress is pulled up past her knees. The rest of the wedding party is in bed, so they’ve come outside to have their first moments alone together all day (and to finish off the champagne, which they’ve been passing between them). He realizes he’s been silent for too long. 

“I just never thought we’d get here,” he says by way of explanation, bumping her shoulder with his own. 

“Well, the roads here from Glasgow weren’t in the best condition but I hardly thought the trip was that long-” 

He gives her an exasperated look. “I meant-” 

“I know.” 

He remembers what he’d so often thought on the Bus. _I want to love you but I don’t know how._ Now that he understands that she felt the same way, he can parse out that though he had figured out the words and glances first, even then she had her own language. He has not forgotten that she risked drowning to save him or that she went undercover into an organization where discovery meant almost certain death because she thought it would help him heal. But now, once he lets himself look for it, he notices her love ritualized into habit, from the way her fingers settle on the back of his neck in the same spot every time, even when she’s not looking, like she’s catalogued the distance between them and the height difference and the right pressure to apply to comfort them both. He thinks back to times when she would dress to match him, though at the time neither recognized the pattern. Or the stock of his favorite chocolatey biscuits which she keeps in her room, even though he knows she never eats them. Or how when in fits of disappointment at failed experiments he would leave his lab bench in disarray, it would always be back in order when he arrived the next morning. And now he understands. 

“Fitz, I’ve just had a horrible thought,” she breaks in again. 

He looks at her with a smile, hardly registering what she’s said. “What’s that, love?” 

“What accent are our children going to have? They’ll be so confused!” 

He could throw her in the lake right then and there. He would, if her dress hadn’t been exorbitantly expensive. Instead he squints at her. “Any boys we raise Scottish. Girls, English.” 

“That’s preposterous on so many levels.” 

“Admit it, my accent drives you wild,” he growls at her. 

She laughs. “And mine doesn’t?” 

“Ehh, in an English schoolgirl fantasy sort of way, maybe.”

“ _Definitely_ not raising our girls English, then! Don’t want them to have their dad getting all pervy every time they speak.” 

He plants his hands behind him, his head lolling onto his shoulder as he looks at her. “Maybe it’ll be a mix. True Fitzsimmons fashion. Best of both worlds. A Scenglish accent. Engtish? We can work on it.” 

She places her hand over his closest one. “I would marry you again tomorrow if I could.” 

“I can think of some better ways to use the time,” he says cheekily. 

“In a minute,” she says softly. “For now, let’s just--” 

“Watch the sunrise?” he suggests.

The sunrise is hours away, but she nods.

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to agentcalliope for beta-ing! I know at least one other person wanted to beta and I love friends and sharing so I will gladly share my future works around... 
> 
> Also I wrote this by accident while I was working myself up to start my Love, Rosie AU -- so expect that shortly. 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr! I'm grapehyasynth over there as well.


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